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Monthly Archives: July 2018

In October 1867 various Indians tribes gathered with U.S. army officers in an attempt to reach a formal peace in what became known as the Medicine Lodge Peace Commission. Most of the Cheyennes arrived fashionably late. One Cheyenne chief named Black Kettle assured General Harney that the Cheyennes had a traditional greeting that differed from other tribes, and he should not worry.

When they arrived, they put their horses into four columns on the other side of a creek. A bugle sounded, and the Cheyennes charged across the creek one column after another, roding hard straight towards General Harney, shooting in the air and hollering.

Harney received assurances. Stand still. Everything is fine.

Still, they galloped on towards him. Harney clearly had his doubts but remained unmoved. Other Comanche Indians already present clearly had misgivings and grabbed their own weapons.

Just a few feet in front of the general and the Comanche’s, the Cheyenne horses roared to a halt and bent low in one fluid motion as the Cheyenne warriors dismounted. They broke out laughing and started shaking hands with all present.

Among the hundreds of anecdotes from Peter Cozzen’s excellent The Earth is Weeping, this one stands out for me as most emblematic. When different cultures came together–and not just white and Indian cultures but differing Indian cultures–conflict can seem almost inevitable. The slightest error would mean violence and further mistrust, even if neither side necessarily wanted violence. Here, some patience and personal risk on the side of General Harney and the Comanche’s paid off, but we should not kid ourselves and say that such an outcome was easily obtained or even likely to occur.

Alas, after this auspicious beginning, the conference itself completely failed to produce anything like peace.

For much of our nation’s past we believed in our history. That is, our textbooks taught us that, while we were not perfect as a nation, we were on the right side of history. Older westerns may have shown “good” Indians, but consistently sided with the whites. But with the publication of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and the movie Little Big Man, the narrative pivoted almost entirely. Now, just as in Dances with Wolves, the army was the bad guys and the Indians were the good guys. The story we once told about our past no longer convinced us.

Cozzens attempts to redress the imbalance and provide a much more complex view. When one’s work receives positive reviews from National Review and The New York Times, you have probably hit upon something we need for our understanding of this period, if not for our whole culture. One reviewer labeled his work “quietly subversive,” which I think apt. Cozzens will not let us rest with easy categories. I would not call him as attempting to reverse the narrative by saying, “All those bad things you’ve heard that whites did to Indians? Not true!” While he mentions a variety of Indian atrocities against whites and each other, for the most part he blames Americans for the failure to achieve peace.

He takes care to show a murky tapestry and blurred lines. He shows us generals and Indians who respected each other and sought friendship, and those on both sides who hated each other and wanted war. And–we have to find a place for the African-American “Buffalo Soldiers” in the narrative. Some tribes turned against other tribes and showed no mercy, and Cozzens admits that the Indians’ version of total war against each other had much more brutality than ours did against them. Some Indian agents had great ideas as well as good intent, others tried to implement grand visions that made no sense and would surely only lead to violence through unrealistic expectations–as some generals took pains to explain. Instead of race vs. race, The Earth is Weeping shows us a web of confusing and shifting alliances. In the end, the main problem seemed to rest not in our official policy, but in that we had no coherent peace policy or any means of enforcing one, which left events at the mercy of violence on both sides.

Thus, Cozzens’ account takes on elements of Shakespearean tragedy, where certain key individuals take action that creates terrible situations. But aspects of Greek tragedy present themselves as well, where it seems almost inevitable that gigantic, unseen forces would certainly frustrate those with goodwill on both sides.

Surely the Indian wars of the West shared in some ways with wars that others have fought across time, but we should seek for what made this conflict unique to our context. Many of the tribes Cozzens writes about had a warrior culture. To earn status in the tribe, a young man had to show bravery and fight. No other path to status existed. Younger braves would surely resent their elders who told them not to fight–easy for them to say, who already had status and power. Of course, various tribes never sought peace at all. Many Indians knew that they had little chance against the army, but . . . better to go down remaining true to your identity.

But, as Tocqueville pointed out, America lacks a warrior elite mentality. Democracies he believed, naturally seek to avoid war, though they become quite formidable if united to actually fight. In time a united democratic force, he believed, would destroy an aristocratic warrior-elite society. But America had no unity on this issue, with political divisions on Indian questions as deep as exist today on other matters, and this begs the question–how then was our victory over the Indians so decisive?

Our political divisions can be separated broadly into “conservatives,” and “liberals.”

Conservatives tend to believe in a limited government that allows its citizens the broadest possible latitude. Self-government means that culture should have pride of place, not law–which comes in only at the margins. Liberals can look at the Indian wars and say, “This is the fault of conservatives. With a bigger and more powerful government we could have had a more coherent policy that we could enforce. If only we had the power to curtail our liberty of movement and actually enforce various laws (with the attendant higher taxes to increase revenue) and treaties, we could have averted the tragedy of the Indian wars.” Gary Gerstle makes this very argument in his Liberty and Coercion.

Liberals tend to believe in bigger government, but what purpose does this bigger government serve? For those on the left, the government exists to protect the right of individuals to do what they want. So conservatives can level a charge akin to, “You liberals care nothing for Law. If you want abortion, you override all law and custom to get it. If you want gay marriage, you will have it. You care little for the boundaries of code or culture–you simply want the government big enough so that no one can stop you from doing what you want to do.” Liberals tend to have a special focus on aiding those perceived to occupy the margins of society. Well, those who moved west certainly were not wealthy, elite, industrialists, the “one percenters.”

What Americans “wanted” in the latter half of the 19th century was the unencumbered ability to move west. No prominent leader of either side questioned this basic premise.

Tentatively, I suggest that herein lies the root of U.S. unity in the Indian wars, and perhaps our unity as a culture at large. We believe that we should have what we want. With this unity, our democratic society would surely defeat the more “aristocratic” Indian tribes.* Perhaps unity was subconscious then, and perhaps it is subconscious now, but both liberals and conservatives seem to want the same thing–doing what we want–via different means. Thus, neither a large government or a small one, neither a conservative or liberal policy, would have made much difference. If Americans wanted to move west, and if they believed that they should have the freedom to move west, it was bound to happen.

Perhaps this is the Greek element of this part of our history.

For the Shakespearean, I offer a variety of quotes below from The Earth is Weeping.

Dave

*We tend to think of the Indian tribes monolithically, but Cozzens shows that no real unified sense of “Indianness” existed among the tribes until the very end of the conflict–when it was far too late. This lack of unity among the tribes (perhaps common among other warrior-elite societies, like ancient Greece?), must also be a factor in this war.

We have heard much talk of the treachery of the Indian. In treachery, broken pledges on the part of high officials, lies, thievery, slaughter of defenseless women and children . . . the Indian was a mere amatuer in comparison to the “noble white man.”

Lt. Britton Davis, US Army

******

I knew that the white man was coming to fight us and take away our land, and I thought it was not right. We are humans too and God created us all alike, and I was going to do the best I could to defend our nation. So I started on the warpath when I was 16 years old.

Fire Thunder, Cheyenne Warrior

******

If the lands of the white man are taken, civilization justifies him in resisting the invader. Civilization does more than this: it brands him a coward and a slave if he submits to the wrong. If the savage resists civilization, with the 10 Commandments in one hand and the sword in the other, demands his immediate extermination.

Report of the Indian Peace Commission, 1868

******

You have asked for my advice . . . I can say that I can see no way in which your race can become as numerous and prosperous as the white race except if you live by the cultivation of the soil [instead of roaming and hunting]. It is the object of this government to be at peace with all our red brethren, and if our children should sometimes behave badly and violate treaties, it is against our wish. You know, it is not always possible for a father to have his children behave precisely as he might wish.

Abraham Lincoln, 1863

*******

I do not wonder, and you will not either, that when the Indians see their game driven away and their people starve, their source of supplies cut off . . . that they go to war. They are surrounded on all sides, and they can only fight while they can. Our treatment of the Indian is an outrage.

General George Crook

*******

An army officer once asked a Cheyenne chief why his tribe made war on the neighboring Crow tribe. He responded, “We stole land from the Crow because they had the best hunting ground. We wanted more room for ourselves.”

******

The savage requires a greater extent of territory to sustain themselves than is compatible with progress and the just claims of civilized life, and must yield to those claims.

President James Monroe, 1817

******

I feel pity for the poor devil who naturally wriggles against his doom, and I have seen whites who would kill Indians just as they would bears, all for gold, and care nothing for it. Such men have no regard for treaties. But the savage is slothful, and is in need of discipline.

Gen. Wiiliam T. Sherman, 1866

******

The Great White Father sends us presents and wants us to sell him the road. But the White Chief goes with soldiers on the road before we say Yes or No.

Red Cloud, 1868

******

Disease, drink, intertribal warfare, the aggression of lawless whites, and the steady and restless emigration into Indian hunting lands–all of these factors endanger the very existence of the Plains Indians.

The Senate’s “Doolittle Commission,” 1867

******

The Indian is the best rough rider, the best soldier, and certainly the best natural horseman in the world [white scalps counted for little in Indian villages, as little honor was to be had from killing whites, viewed as inferior opponents].

Col. Richard Dodge, 1869

*******

When Congress offered to build homes for the Indians upon reasonably good land where they would stay, Cheyenne warrior Satanta replied,

“This building of homes for us is nonsense. We don’t want you to build homes for us. We would all die. My country is small enough already. If you build us houses, I know that our land would be smaller. Why do you insist on this?

Medicine Lodge Peace Commission (MLPC) talks

**********

I was born on the prairies, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. i live like my fathers before me, and like them, I live happy.

Comanche Chief Ten Bears, MLPC — this speech did not please those from other tribes, however, as they accused Ten Bears for his “womanly manner” of “talking of everything to death.”

***********

You think you are doing a great deal for us by giving us these presents, yet if you gave all the goods you could give, still we would prefer our own life. You give us presents, then take our lands. That produces war. I have said all there is to say.

Cheyenne Chief Buffalo Chip

**********At the conclusion of the MLPC meeting, there was this exchange between General Sheridan and a Congressional Indian Agent:

Agent:When the guns arrive [guns were promised to the Indians as part of the peace negotiations] may i distribute them to the Indians?

Sheridan: Yes, give them arms, and if they go to war with us, the soldiers will kill them honorably.

Buffalo Chip: Let your soldiers grow long hair, so that we may have some honor in killing them.

*********

The more I see of these Indians, the more I become convinced that they all have to be killed or maintained as a species of paupers. Their attempts at civilization are simply ridiculous.

General Sherman, said after continuing incursions by Arapaho and Cheyenne on the “Smoky Hill” region left 79 dead civilians, 13 women raped, and thousands of livestock destroyed or scattered

******

The white man never lived who truly loved the Indian, and no true Indian ever lived that did not hate the white man.

Lakota chief Sitting Bull

*******

When Cheyenne “Dog Soldiers” raided white settlements (including kidnapping and execution of white women), Sheridan used Pawnee warriors to help track them down. They caught them at a place called Seven Springs, and the Pawnee killed the Cheyenne indiscriminately without mercy. One Cheyenne survivor of the raid said, “I do not blame the Pawnee for killing our women and children. As far back as I remember the Cheyenne and Sioux slaughtered every male, female, and child we found of the Pawnee. Each hated the other with savage hearts that know only total war.

******

Modoc Indian raiders were captured. Some Modocs went on the “warpath” after some Oregonian settlers had killed defenseless Modoc villagers. When arrested, the leader of the band, “Captain Jack,” said, “If the white men that killed our villagers had been tried and punished, I would submit to you much more willingly. Do we Indians stand any show for justice with you white people, with your own laws? I say no. I know it. You people can shoot any Indian any time you want whether we are at war or peace. I charge the white people with wholesale murder.

I remember that back in my day, we had multiple sections of analogies on the SAT. I always thought they were fun, but alas, analogies are no longer part of the test. Apparently different reasons exist as to their absence, ranging from cultural bias to not wanting the test to seem too “tricky.” I care little for standardized tests so I wouldn’t argue the point too strongly, but I think any look around at our discourse, where everyone who sneezes wrongly gets compared to Hitler, shows that we need more rigorous analogical thinking in our lives.

Of course analogies can be tricky, but making sense of reality requires them, so we need good ones and we need to distinguish good ones from bad. As long as we know that using a three-leaf clover to describe the Trinity works in some ways and fails in others, we can benefit from the illustration. But using a car, a cigarette, and an oven as a replacement analogy can’t help anyone, despite the fact that all three can sometimes produce smoke.

MIT professor Vaclav Smil specializes in the study of energy, but he has a hobby of reading Roman history. In the wake of our post 9/11 military ventures, and especially after things in Iraq began to go south, we saw many academics proclaiming the demise of the American “empire,” with comparisons to the fate of Rome everywhere across the media landscape. Smil smelled a rat, and wrote Why America is not a New Rome to counter this wave. I wish he put more thought into his title, but it points to the straightforward approach of his work. He brings the discipline of a scientist to the fog of blogs and talking heads.

The question is one of analogy–how alike are the American and Roman experiences?

The comparisons should not surprise us, and have some basis in fact. Our founders modeled our constitution on Rome’s. Our early years resemble the heyday of the aristocratically oriented Roman Republic governed primarily by a strong Senate. Since the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the Great Depression, we have witnessed the continual growth of executive power until now Congress has nearly reached rubber-stamp status, akin to the senate in Rome under the emperors.

Briefly, then, the case for strong links between America and Rome:

After 1989, America had no real military or economic competitor, just as Rome had no real competition in its sphere of influence after the 2nd Punic War

America has more than 200 overseas bases and can put its military in action most anywhere in the globe much faster than anyone else, just as Rome could move with its road system throughout its empire.

The world economy is controlled through New York, and Washington sets the basic rules of this economy, just as Rome did so for centuries in its era.

At the same time, both societies experienced drains on the real power of their economy through foolish military ventures and lack of stable monetary policy.

Both societies developed professional militaries that have grown increasingly distant from the general public

Both societies exercised considerable soft power through their cultural exports

The population of both societies seemed driven by distraction and entertainment. Some point out strong connections between the gladiatorial games and our love for (American) football.

A loss of cultural glue across large geography means that trust and the ability to suffer together both decrease. Hence, both societies would “buy off” the population with bread, buyouts, stimulus packages, etc.

Some even went so far as to say that both civilizations had a, “common obsession with central heating and plumbing.”

Stated this way some connections seem strong, but Smil doesn’t buy it.

First we can consider the concept of “empire.” Some understand that if America has an empire, it is “informal,” and “an empire without an emperor.” Smil argues that some concepts of empire are so vague as to be meaningless, and pushes for a very specific definition:

Empire means political control exercised by one organized political unit over another unit separate from it and alien to it. Its essential core is political: the possession of final authority by one entity over the vital political decisions of another.

With this definition in place we should consider if America ever exercised imperial ambitions. Perhaps one could begin with the Mexican War of 1846, or perhaps earlier with the Indian wars that made the Northwest Territories into Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. With our various conflicts on the continent we did not so much seek to control ‘alien’ peoples as much as we sought to move in and displace them. Perhaps one could argue that the Spanish-American War made us an imperial power, but even then, we gave Cuba independence immediately and the Philippines got their independence right after W.W. II. Smil spends a lot of time on this rather technical argument over what exactly constitutes an empire. He has some good points to make, but only stylistically. The real question, I think, involves how much power the U.S. has vis a vis the rest of the world.

Here Smil gets more interesting and convincing. He cites a variety of data to show that American power, or at least our relative share of power (in political, economic, and military terms), has actually declined dramatically since the end of W.W. II. Our global share of economic output has dropped by at least 1/3 since 1945, with continuing trade deficits largely due to reliance on foreign energy. We send much less of our military abroad than we used to. True, we have hundreds of military bases all over the world, but less than 20 of them have more than 1000 troops. President Eisenhower served as our top military commander in our most glorious and successful war. Yet he denounced the “Military-Industrial Complex in his farewell address. One cannot even conceive of any Roman ever doing any such thing. Empires do not act this way.

Smil agrees that we might call the U.S. a “hegemonic” power and not an empire. But . . . he argues that we are either a weak hegemon or a benign one. Castro ruled Cuba for decades and all agreed he posed a potential threat to our well being, yet we could do nothing to stop him. Similarly, we could not get rid of North Korea or beat North Vietnam. Smil continues,

Germany was defeated by the United States in a protracted war that cost more than 180,000 lives, subsequently received America’s generous financial aid to resurrect its formidable economic potential, and is home to more than 60,000 U.S. troops. Yet when its foreign minister was asked to join the Iraq War coalition, he simply told the U.S. Secretary of Defense, “Sorry, you haven’t convinced me,” and there the matter ended.

No less tellingly, the Turkish government (with NATO’s second largest standing army and after decades of a close relationship with the U.S.), forbade US forces to use its territory for the invasion of Iraq, a move that complicated the drive to Baghdad and undoubtedly prolonged the campaign. America in a time of war could not even count on two of its closer allies, but there was no retaliation, no hint of indirect punishment, such as economic sanctions or suspension of certain relations. One could cite many other such instances . . . both illustrating America’s ineffective hegemony and non-imperial behavior.

With a proliferation of graphs and paragraphs like these, Smil makes a good case that America exercises far less power than its critics at home and abroad surmise. Smil’s book is not brilliant, but he writes with a concision and clarity that cannot but convince the reader.

Or perhaps, very nearly convince. American political culture struggles for coherence at the moment, but we have experienced times in our past very much like this before. We have a disconnect between cultural elites and everyday people, but as Smil points out, this happens in almost every advanced civilization. Economic inequality is a problem, but again, Smil shows how this tends to happen in many advanced economies, and in any case, our inequality now is not nearly as great as it was in the late 19th century. By these measures we are no more an empire, or no more in decline, than other countries with power at different times. The analogy is too thin to make anything of.

But . . . perhaps the strongest point of comparison lies elsewhere. Toynbee argued that the military and economic problems Rome experienced in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD had their roots in the spiritual detachment of stoicism. In a similar vein, Eric Voegelin wrote frequently that global power and global influence (of which the U.S. certainly has in some measure) easily leads to a gnostic view of the created order, which again inspires a detachment and loss of engagement.

Perhaps this should be our biggest concern. We have recently legalized pot, the new drug of choice (in contrast to stimulants like cocaine of 30-40 years ago). The digital revolution allows us to entertain ourselves with our screens and enter fantasy lands alone in our rooms. Recently the Caspar mattress company founded a line of stores dedicated to napping as an art form. It may be a good thing not to have a political, military, or other such analogous connections to Rome. Here’s hoping that our growing sense of detachment is not in fact the strongest point of comparison between us.

It seems that we occupy a strange place in our national life. We have more political divisions even though we have much less actual discretionary spending in the federal budget than in the past. President’s Trump and Obama function/ed largely as symbols for their supporters and detractors. Many do not care much to look at their particular actions, rather, an action becomes bad or good because of who did it. We have a hard time seeing past the ad hominem.

But this should not surprise us. Perhaps it is our very lack of flexibility in the budget that heightens the symbolic role of the president. I suspect also that especially since the end of the Cold War, and probably since Vietnam, America has searched for a new identity, and forming an identity requires strong symbols. And, while I think that we would struggle in our political life currently in any case because of this, as (bad) luck would have it, our last two presidents have been near opposites in terms of their personalities and style. Some argue that Obama was the far more “rational” president, but even if that were true, Obama’s supporters had a strong emotional, gut-level attachment to him, akin to Trump’s current supporters. In any case, we will miss what is really happening if we focus only on the policies, or the outward appearance of things (though to be sure, we could use some dispassionate focus on what presidents are actually doing in addition to their symbolic perception).

What is a president, exactly?

Childish interpretations of kingship in earlier eras tend to argue along the lines of, “Kings dressed up in all their finery because they were greedy, cruel, and didn’t care about the people.” Much better interpretations see monarchs as an extension of the people themselves in some way. The people would not want them to dress in a dowdy fashion, for that would reflect poorly on them too. So, for example, many Frenchman took great pride in the fact that Louis XIV could eat 2-3x more than a normal man with no apparent ill effects. But I have struggled with even some of these more sympathetic approaches. I still feel that they leave something out.

Alice Hunt’s The Drama of Coronation brings out many nuances and subtleties of English coronation rites. She demonstrates a great ability to let the texts breathe and speak for themselves. Her analysis strikes me as fair and careful, and her comments attempt to illumine what for 21st-century moderns is a great mystery. She traces the coronations of five English monarchs in attempt to answer the question:

What is a king (or queen), exactly?

We will miss the mark widely if we think only in terms of having an executive function in government. One problem that faces historians with this question is that we have very few records of medieval coronation rites. This in itself gives us a clue that coronation ceremonies had a primarily religious function. In the older Byzantine rite, we see that the public, and even catechumens, had to leave the service during the canon of the mass. In the western rite of St. Gregory the Great, the confession of sin has communicants proclaim, “I will not speak of thy mysteries to thine enemies.” Hunt suggests that at least beginning with Pepin the Short, coronations took place in a sacramental and liturgical sphere, which would have meant “private” in at least some ways.

But we have many records or eyewitnesses of England’s 16th-century coronations. The crowning of Henry VIII would not have been unusual, but each subsequent coronation had its own unique elements that perhaps called for a more public justification, aside from the turbulent historical circumstances:

Anne Boleyn was crowned. The fact that a new queen would be publicly crowned while the king still reigned was entirely novel.

The coronations of Mary and Elizabeth as “queens regnant” had not happened before

Edward VI coronation involved that of a boy king amidst stark religious changes

As mentioned, Hunt handles the sources marvelously. My only quibble is one that I have with many (it seems) English historians, which involves their failure to raise their eyes above the various perspectives and declare something definite. I am all for intellectual humility, but sometimes it takes more humility to take a risk of being wrong than to say nothing at all.

The first issue Hunt tackles involves historians who try and argue for something along the lines of “exploitation of ceremonies” to achieve power. She cites some historians of the Wars of the Roses that accuse the Yorkist faction of attempting just this to achieve power. Hunt dismisses this perspective quickly. Along with David Kertzer and others, she argues that ceremonies don’t exploit as much as they create legitimate rule. This may sound silly to some modern ears if they think only of ancient robes and mitres. But if we imagine a disputed presidential election in the U.S., and one candidate had the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court administer the oath of office, we would not say that he “exploited ceremony.” Rather, the ceremony–at least in part–made him president. He could not be president without the ceremony, nor would we say the ceremony meant nothing more than empty ritual.

Henry VIII gives us a good place to begin as the last great coronation before the Reformation. Here we reside in the realm, so we imagine, of absolute divine right before the advent of more popular Reformation polities. But just as the Roman emperors opposed themselves to the aristocratic senate and ruled in the name of the people, so too did Henry and other European kings. Kingship had an element of “popularity” about it, in the strict sense of the Latin meaning of “populares.” Hunt quotes from the Liber Regalis:

Here followers a device for the manner and order of Coronation of the most excellent and Christian prince Henry VIII, rightful and undoubted inheritor of the Crown of England and of France with all appurtenances, which is only by the whole assed and consent of every of the three estates of his realm.

Henry’s legitimacy is real, rooted not just in Heaven but on Earth. Thus, the “physicality” of his rule has a reflection in his person, and required the physical objects of rulers past, especially the chalice of St. Edward, among other things. These various objects had a hierarchy of value, and who carried them and where people processed gave rather than reflected status. Contra the modern assumption of the homogenization of space and time, the king stood somewhere between heaven and earth. Heaven of course was not earth, but the two met in various times and places in the medieval view. Church buildings themselves were a touchstone, and the designs of the buildings manifested this.* Clergy were consecrated, set apart, so they could receive the ultimate intersection between heaven and earth–the holy eucharist. The City of God was not the City of Man, but they sought to model earthly order on heavenly order, or reality itself. Thus, officiating clergy elevated the king at a certain point in the coronation, just as they would elevate the bread and wine. The ceremony made the connection of “consecration” immediately obvious to all.

Many assume that Henry’s Reformation might make such “catholic” ceremonies obsolete, but in fact Henry seems to have gone “all out” in Anne’s coronation ceremony. To start, he held a separate coronation service for her, which may have had no precedent. Second, the ceremony took place on Whitsunday (Pentecost), the second most holy day in the church calendar. Third, Henry absented himself from being seen directly during the ceremony itself, which gave him more “god-like” status, the unseen yet present “earthly god” bidding Anne receive the crown. Finally, Henry wanted for Anne to wear Katherine’s crown during the ceremony. Yet here even Henry met a roadblock he could not overcome, as the man in charge of the crown would not give it up. The ambassador of Venice relates,

Accordingly, the king wrathfully sent to the one who has charge of the queen’s [i.e. Katherine] crown, Master Sadocho by name, a great man in that island, requiring the crown for the coronation. Master Sadocho replied he could not give it up because of the oath he had taken to the said queen, that he would guard that crown faithfully. The king then went to see him and expressed his desire. At this, Master Sadocho, who is a man of ripe age, took off his cap and flung it to the ground without saying a word. When the king saw this he asked what moved him to do such a thing as this, to which Master Sadocho replied that rather than give him the crown he would suffer his head to lie where his cap did. . . . As he is a great personage who also has a son also of great worth and numerous followers, the king took no further steps, but had another crown made for the coronation of the new queen, who has been pregnant for five months.

Obviously, symbols had real meaning for those outside of the king and clergy.

In all these things Henry to me seems to overreach, realizing the precarious nature of his enterprise. He had founded a new church, divorced/annulled his marriage with Katherine, and married someone already pregnant. He gave Anne all the symbolism he could. Prayers said during the coronation directly assumed that the child Anne carried was a boy. Alas for Anne, perhaps the connection between symbolism and reality could only go so far.

The real shift took place with Edward VI. Here we had a combination of 1) No Henry to go all out to get his way, 2) More evangelical reformers in charge in the Church of England, 3) A boy king who had no real say in what went on. The crucial distinction came when Bishop Cranmer stated that, “the oil [for consecration], if added, is but a ceremony,” and not strictly necessary. Nothing really happens at the coronation that could not happen elsewhere. Heredity, the system, and his oath made Edward king, and nothing more. Certainly the ceremony had to have the Church presiding–or so it seemed obvious at the time–but the Church no longer had to “do” anything important.

One might argue that this shifted politics wholly into the realm of the secular, and so made kingship defendant on the right exercise of power. This made kings potentially just as politically vulnerable as any president, but in a more precarious position, as Charles I and Louis XVI discovered.

As a culture, we clearly crave symbolic archetypes more than in the past. We see this in the consistent popularity of super-hero movies, and the somewhat polarizing popularity of Jordan Peterson. We see it in recent political commentary, as a handful of mostly normal people believed that Obama was the anti-Christ in 2008, or that Bush and Trump were/are Nazis. We see it in our woeful neglect of Congress–perhaps there are just too many of them to affix any meaningful archetypes. It may be that we are forced into this symbolic realm by the incomprehensibility of our laws. However we got here, this unsettling political moment gives our culture some interesting opportunities to understand our symbols and to recover an older view of reality.

Today we tend to assume that if something is a symbol it is not really real, but only a signifier for the real. Hence, we know what a male sign for the bathroom means, even though of course no one in the bathroom looks like the symbol. Symbol and reality live in different worlds, in different planes of meaning. But the older meaning of “symbol” meant the bringing together of reality to create “real” meaning. St. Maximos the Confessor writes,

…for he who starting from the spiritual world sees appear the visible world or else who sees appear symbolically the contour of spiritual things freeing themselves from visible things… that one does not consider anything of what is visible as impure, because he does not find any irreconcilable contradiction with the ideas of things.

To quote Jonathan Pageau, “a symbol is a meeting place of two worlds, the meeting of the will of God with His creation.” Pageau goes on to say that the most real things are that way because precisely because they are symbols. Reality “really happens” when heaven and earth unite, when they “symbol together.”^

I can’t say for sure if this older view of reality will help us understand exactly what a president is, but I think it will help. The more self-aware we can be of what we are doing, the more hope we have. Then, maybe we can go back to the lemonade on the porch days of debating the finer points of Social Security reform.

Dave

*Pageau talks mostly of church designs in the eastern Roman empire, though his point applies in the west, though with different applications.